Dr. Seaman Asahel Knapp (1833-1911)

KNAPP

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 9/24/2016 at 20:18:31

From Nevada Representative April 7, 1911 (front page)

OBITUARY

Funeral of Dr. Knapp

The funeral of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp former president of the Iowa State College, was conducted Tuesday afternoon in the assembly room of the hall of agriculture, and he was buried in the college cemetery, where his wife was buried a few months ago and where two other presidents of the college, Welch and Beardshear, lie buried.

The death of Dr. Knapp has brought out many expressions of strong appreciation, and it is evident that useful as was his work in Iowa, his greater work had been since he left the state. He was a northern man with northern ideas of organization and improvements, and in his twenty years' residence in the south he acquired the knowledge of southern conditions which, with his northern training, made him especially fit for an exponent of the general program of merging northern thrift with southern opportunities. In Iowa and Louisiana, too, he had been an expert in matters of scientific agriculture, and when, therefore, it was sought by Secretary Wilson to gather a board of experts who should work effectively for the common promotion of the agricultural interest of the country, Dr. Knapp was naturally and wisely chosen as representative of southern agriculture, and it was while engaged in this work that his last illness came upon him and he died in the City of Washington.

Dr. Knapp is a notable example of the Iowa men who have been prominent and useful indeed in Iowa, but whose prominence and usefulness became much greater when opportunity was afforded to carry Iowa ideas and training into fields where the competition was less. He was a valuable man in Iowa; but in Louisiana he was invaluable.